How to Send SMS from Gmail?

December 29, 2013

Are you tired of using your phone each time to send a text? Is your carrier charging you too much for sending texts? You might well want to send a text online! While there are several ways to send SMS online I love using Gmail for it. Not many of you might know this but Gmail is not just for sending and receiving emails! You can send and receive texts on Gmail too! Here’s how you can send SMS from Gmail.

Before you send an SMS using Gmail you have to enable SMS (text messaging) in chat. To do it follow the following steps:

Enable SMS in Google Chat

1. After you have logged in to your Gmail account click on the gear icon on the upper-right corner of yours screen.

2. Click on ‘Settings’. Wait while you are redirected to the Settings page.

3. Out of the several tabs you see, click on ‘Labs’.

4. Look for SMS (text messaging) in Chat. Use Ctrl+F to enable search and then type SMS (text messaging) in Chat. You’ll see this:

5. Click on ‘Enable’.

6. Save settings by pressing the ‘Save changes’ button.

Send a text Online With Gmail

7. Now look for ‘Search, chat or SMS’ box located on the bottom-left of your screen.

8. Now point cursor over the contact you want to send SMS to -> Click on the small arrow -> Click on ‘Send SMS’.

or search for the user by his name and click on ‘Send SMS’ beside his name.

9. Like in the second case if there’s a phone number attached with the contact you’ll see it and by simply clicking on ‘Send SMS’ you can send the contact a SMS. BTW, hit the Enter key to send the message 😉

Like in the first case if there isn’t a phone number attached with a contact and you still attempt to send him a SMS, Google will ask you to enter a phone number, save it and then send a text.

Some exciting things you should know!

You can send SMS to any country you want to free of cost.

You get 50 credits for free. Each time you send an SMS, your credit count goes down by one.

Every time you receive an SMS in chat (for example when someone replies to your text message) you get five credits.

The maximum number of credits you can have at any time is 50.

If your credits reach zero, you’ll get an additional credit (+1) after 24 hours. You can of course reply to your own messages and get five extra credits anytime.

Tip: If you have only one credit left, send a text message to yourself and reply to it using your phone and you’ll have five credits in no time.

You cannot buy additional credits, but you can always follow the previous tip to increase your credits free of cost.

There are several SMS chat commands available. Have a look at them below.

Google SMS Chat Commands

HELP: Send this to any contact and you will receive a response on using the SMS feature and a quick glance on other useful SMS commands.

STOP: This will block all SMS from Gmail. You can use it when the SMS messages get too annoying.

START: If you’ve blocked SMS previously, this command unblocks them and you’ll now receive SMS as you received them earlier when the SMS feature wasn’t blocked.

BLOCK: Send this to any contact or phone number you wish to block. You’ll never receive an SMS from that contact again. Use this to keep prank callers and telemarketers away.

UNBLOCK: Use this command to unblock any contact or phone number. You’ll start receiving SMS from that contact again. However you may not receive any SMS the contact may have sent you while being blocked.

Well that’s how you send a text online with Gmail. It doesn’t cost you a penny and is fast too. Use it when you are short of balance or when you have to send international messages.

As of 4/1/2014 it appears that SMS functionality has been quietly removed from gmail: The instructions fail at step 4. (“Look for SMS (text messaging) in Chat. Use Ctrl+F to enable search and then type SMS (text messaging) in Chat. You’ll see this:”)

I’m afraid that Randy speaks the truth. Google made a very quiet announcement (that went completely unannounced) two or three days ago making it known that Google would no longer be maintaining the built in SMS from Chat feature/Lab.
I was praying it was all a really unfunny April Fools joke but while I was trying to get to the root of the cause, I found a confirmation from Google themselves listed in the Gmail support archive.

This is sort of odd. Why is this article dated “June 24, 2016” ? (today’s date is December 02, 2016). I notice the oldest comment posted was posted December 30, 2013, so it seems this article should be dated on that date or before. Looking on “Wayback”, the capture for this page from January 04, 2015 shows: “Last updated Dec 30, 2013”.

Having a correct date is very helpful to people searching for current information. It’s very disappointing and frustrating to search and find this and think that in June 2016 this method worked.